All ICPCN members are invited to join this special interest group.  To do so please send an email to sue@icpcn.co.za with your name and contact details. 

Label the email:  ICPCN PAIN SIG

As a member of the special interest group we would invite you to send us your ideas and contributions.  Questions may be posted on the forum especially created for this purpose.  The password to join this forum is "paedpain".

The current main objective is to provide members with a forum on which they can post any pain related problem to other members of the special interest group. However we would also like to encourage members to send us any information on childhood pain that might be of interest, be it in the form of articles, publication or personal experience.  These will be posted on this page of the ICPCN website. 

To send ideas and contributions, please write to Sue Boucher at sue@icpcn.co.za

The SIG is being led by the following professionals:

René Albertyn (PhD)
Senior Researcher:  Pain Management
Department Paediatric Surgery
Red Cross Children’s Memorial Hospital
Cape Town
South Africa

Dr Michelle Meiring
Paediatric Palliative Care Consultant
Hospice Palliative Care Association
Founder / Director of the Bigshoes Foundation
University of Cape Town
South Africa

Joan Marston
Paediatric Palliative Care Manager
Hospice Palliative Care Association SA
ICPCN Chair
South Africa

Motivation for the development and introduction of the Special Interest Group (SIG) for paediatric pain management in the developing world

I had a conversation with a mother, many, many years ago. I was trying to comfort her, for you see, this mother had just lost her baby – and while the baby was no more than 48 hours old when she died, the pain on the mothers’ face, touched my soul.  I was at a loss for words. She had carried this child for almost nine months, and for almost nine months she spoke to her little daughter, sang to her and like many other mothers, had dreams for the future of her precious little baby.  But 48 hours after giving birth she’d had to say goodbye.

What this mother told me shaped my life, and stayed with me forever.  She said that when a wife or husband dies, they leave behind a widower or a widow.  When parents die, what is left behind is an orphan, or orphans.  But when a child dies, there are no words in any language to describe those “left behind”, because, she said, there is nothing left behind.  There are no words to describe the pain that is felt, and then she said: “No mother should ever bury a child, for a part of you dies with the child and this part will remain forever dead.”  I was touched by her words and touched by her wisdom.  But while sitting there, I became aware of my own inadequacies, my inability to heal her pain, and my lack of knowledge when it came to managing the baby’s pain and my own fear.

 The story stayed with me during the following weeks, and made me more sensitive to pain and to those around me who were suffering.  I suddenly became acutely aware of my own “aloneness” in providing for the pain needs of an overwhelming number of children. How little I knew, and how big was this responsibility, placed upon my shoulders. I had to deal with the pain needs of, on average, 1000 burned children each year. In addition to that was the pain of many other desperately sick and dying children. Twenty years and thousands of children later, I still feel that things could have been different for me, if only I’d had an opportunity to talk to others in a similar situation. For years it felt like I was the only one dealing with so much pain, and that nobody else could help me.

The idea of developing a special interest group (SIG) for pain management in the developing world came from those years of “working in perceived isolation” and trying to find answers and solutions on my own.  Of course this is not true, there are many like me who are faced with the same problems, the same sick children and who are feeling perhaps the same loneliness and despair I felt so many years ago.

So it is for us that the SIG needs to develop. It is for us who do not always have adequate access to the internet, or text books or peers who can provide answers to the unique problems we have to face in the developing world.  The rationale behind this is to bring people together, to provide an opportunity where we can not only learn from each other, but where we can support each other.

I believe that together we have the answers and solutions to the problems we are faced with. I hope that the SIG will create the opportunity for us to meet and communicate with each other, no matter where in the world we are.

Dr Rene Albertyn
Red Cross Children’s Hospital
Cape Town
South Africa